Posted tagged ‘love is in the blog’

I would have liked to get this post done on the weekend, but it’s ok. Singles Awareness (and/or Appreciation) Day, or SAD (ha!), is often celebrated on February 15th anyway, as a protest against the commercialism of Valentine’s Day.

So anyway, cutsy oootsy look we’re a happy gaming couple blog posts are pretty common. And understandably so. Gaming as a couple is tons of fun. I refuse to date non-gamers for that very reason. To quote the Spice Girls, If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my guild. At least, I think that’s how that song went.

With the, um, Hallmark sponsored events of the past weekend, there’s been a temporary increase of LOOK AT MY WONDERFUL GAMING COUPLE LIFE across the blogosphere. As a result, I feel that there’s a need for a strong voice to represent those of us who do not play as a couple. Who, in fact, solo life as gracefully and effortlessly as Snottydin solo heals WoW.

Because, even though I’m convinced that there are a total of, like, three singles (myself included) who play World of Warcraft, we still deserve representation.

What does a single gamer look like?

It is rumored that the single male gamer looks like either this, or this. On rare occasions, he is rumored to look like this and to whisper obscenities to female characters played by men.

It is rumored that the single female gamer looks like either this, or this.

Those rumors could not be further from the truth. In fact, single male gamers all look like this:

And all of us single female gamers look like this:

True story. What can I say, we’re a modest bunch. We’re also not allowed to post pictures for fear of accusations about our ability to distinguish WoW and eHarmony.

While we’re on the topic, I would like to point out that, in my four years of playing WoW, I have met several players who suffered from the inability to disguish WoW and eHarmony. Most of them were already married.

The Challenges of being a Single Gamer

Ah, it is true, we are very strong, independent and resourceful. Still, some days are a little harder than others and seeing the habits of happy gaming couples may cause a little tint of green.

For example, having excuses for screwing up such as “Sorry XYZ was tickling me! Oh, XYZ stop it!” I would appreciate having easy excuses like that on hand . My “Sorry, my cat was tickling me! Oh, cat stop it!” doesn’t go over as smoothly.

Having to speak for ourselves all the time can get a little old too. We’ve all seen these couples where only one person says boo. “Oh, XYZ is going to get a drink. Oh, XYZ is on the phone. Oh, wait a second, XYZ has to go to the bathroom.” Once, some time ago, as I was leading a guild-only raid in Ulduar when I received the following whisper from a complete stranger in another guild: “Hey, I’m XYZ’s husband. She’s missing a buff right now, could you ask the person giving that buff to buff her?” SRSLY! I came pretty close to demanding she be /gkicked. New rule: if I have to ask for my own buffs, then so does everyone else.

But it’s not all bad

I know some days are hard. Still, dear fellow singletons, let us remember that some days are wonderful. Wonderful, for come what may, we have each other.

Each other. Our fellow singletons. Our friends with whom we’ll stay up until all hours of the night, drinking and laughing over Vent/Skype/telepathy and pwning n00bs in AV. (Or in my case, getting pwned by n00bs in AV.) We’re free to do as we wish with our friendships, no worries of hurting a third party. Never anyone reading over our shoulder. Never having to say “hang on, I need to check with the partner“. Never having to share out of obligation, only out of free will.

We’re never limited to a single gaming partner. Sure, we can have our bestest best friend. But we may have as many bestest best friends as we like. At the same time. At any hour of the day. Like Brittany Spears says: “What we do is innocent, just for fun and nothin’ meant. If you don’t like the company, let’s just do it you and me. You and me…Or three….Or four….- On the floor!”

And yes, she’s totally talking about hanging out with single friends in WoW.

Let Us Rejoice!

When I said we soloed life, I lied. We don’t solo life, we raid life. 100 player team, Wintergrasp style. And we pwn.

Now that the truth is out, I can post here about all the fun I had being Deyndor’s secret admirer for the weekend.

And did I EVER have fun! I did my “required” tasks by posting three comments hinting to my identity (saying I’m female is a hint, yes it is!) in his “admirer weekend” post.

But because I can never do things the way I’m supposed, I got a little crazy. Since Deyndor doesn’t allow anonymous posting, I made an email account (deyndorsfangirl@gmail.com I think it was). While I was filling in the email field, I figured I might as well fill in the website field too, so I made a Deyndor Fan Twitter.

And while I was making a Twitter, I figured I’d go all the way and made a Formspring.

I’ll admit, I was a little worried about overdoing it. He didn’t seem too creeped out, though, so I kept at it. He even played along with the formspring, asking me a question.

I noticed a couple of the bloggers who took part in the event received some “don’t you find that creepy?” comments from readers. The thing is, most of us who signed up already knew each other to a certain extent. We saw the list of participants beforehand, so we knew that whoever was leaving us anonymous comments was someone we’d spoken to before in chat, on Twitter, on each other’s blogs, on Blog Azeroth. It wasn’t at all like getting stalked by a stranger.

I’d like to give a shoutout to my wonderful admirer, the lovely Shawndra from the Escapist Scroll. If you haven’t seen the comments she left me, I encourage you to check them out! Especially the Poe poem she adapted. I <3 my secret admirer!

Finally, I'm going to publicly thank Dristanel for coming up with this great idea. This is probably the best Valentine’s Weekend I’ve ever had. Coming up with ways to stal- err, I mean admire Deyndor was a blast and coming home to kind, anonymous messages on my own blog was a wonderful ego-flattering experience. And as you all know, I’m all about ego-flattering experiences.

If you’re on Nerzhul, standing in the Dalaran bank and you see that twist of the Chapelle show line pop up in your chat, chances are someone from Conquest is nearby. I’m told that our legendary S13 was the first of our guild to make use of that line. Now it’s become more or less our rally cry.

I was wondering which topic I would choose for a February 14th post and none seemed more fitting than some guild love. Whenever I see players complain or make hopeless remarks about their guild, it makes me sad.

Whether you’re a raider or a strictly social player or somewhere in between, as soon as you play a few hours a week, you spend a significant amount of time reading green text from these people, or hear them talk. You may have never met them, but you know their sense of humor (or in some cases, their lack thereof). You know their temperament. Sometimes you know things about them you wish you didn’t. Other times you find out things about them you wish you’d known earlier.

How it all started…

I remember filling out my application. I was a little shaky, I’d never filled out a guild application before. It was around 6 server on a Sunday night. My old guild was raiding and I was on raid hiatus. I needed to think. I needed a change but didn’t know I was ready to leave my old gaming friends. I felt a little sick to my stomach, but here was an opportunity I wasn’t going to pass up.

I may only be able to raid 9 hours a week, but I still wanted to do hard modes. Here was my chance to make the most out of my limited gaming time.

Still, I don’t like having to get used to new people, in real life or in game. Many players float from one guild to another, but not me. When I join a guild, I show up with my cat, all my clothes, my furniture and the kitchen sink. It took me about 20 minutes to fill out the application. Took another hour to edit my application and cut out the unnecessary words. It makes me chuckle when guild officers complain about applicants not writing enough. I bet Conquest’s officers fell asleep scrolling down my walls of text. What can I say? I really, really like writing about myself.

The Early Days

I was nervous when I first joined. I got a teased because I wouldn’t talk on vent. I wrote a blog post about it. My new GM answered in a blog post of his own. Look familiar? I just about died on the spot yet he was absolutely right, once I stopped panicking, I felt a lot more comfortable in the guild.

Over the past few months, I got to know my guildies a little better. I discovered one was a Russian spy disguising his identity with a French accent. I discovered that another guildie was quite the Casanova as he and I patiently offered unsolicited dating advice to a third, clueless and flustered, guildie. I discovered that one of our bear tanks raids with, on her shoulders, the skin of a bear she killed with her bare hands. I discovered that rogues talk way too much (but I love them anyway. One of them even gave me a fancy shmancy new headset!). I discovered that we had a team of brothers who will take everything you say out of context and hold it against you. I discovered many other crazy, and by crazy I mean awesome, personalities among those people I raid with a few nights a week.

The good times don’t stop

Speaking of awesome, I’ve experienced quite a few awesome moments. Starting right at my very first 25 man raid with them. As we made our way to Ony, we noticed a Horde guild hanging around the stone. We started to kill them. What the heck, I thought, and joined in. We won. We celebrated. I found out afterward that the guild we killed was, at the time, a top 20 US guild.

We also have some moments of awesome on our guild forums. My personal favorite was the thread where everyone commissioned the daughter of one of our guildies (who’s also doing some artwork for my blog BTW!) to do drawings of their character killing our brave and fearless raid leader’s paladin. Our brave and fearless raid leader would probably disagree about the awesomeness of that thread.

You know you’re really at home when you find yourself trying to explain your guild’s personal dialect to outsiders. No matter how I tried to put it, I just couldn’t get my girlfriends to understand how much win is in the word “poopsock”. I don’t care what you think, I find it hilarious.

Just us, chillin' with Festergut

Here’s the Good Part!

Now, you’re probably reading this and thinking “man, I wish I could have that much awesomeness in my WoW“.

Good news! You can have that much awesomeness in your WoW! We need new people!

A lot of our members have stuff going on in their lives that’s getting in the way of their raiding, so there are quite a few openings, notably for DPS and backup healers.

We do have a lot of priests (I guess thats what happens when your main recruiter writes a popular priest blog), but the lack of Shamans, Druids and Holy Paladins needs to be remedied. Hot guys with sexy accents are especially appreciated (by me).

We raid Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursday from 6 to 9 pacific time, with optional 10 man runs on Wenesdays and Sundays.

So if you want to hang out with a bunch of nutcases, and by nutcases I mean wonderful players, like yours truly, and Ryan, and Skip Cocoa, and Matticus, and Hempia (who many of you Twitterfolk probably know) and all those I described earlier, come apply on our websiiiiiiiite!!!!!

I’m interrupting the gift series with a very special post. See, in the spirit of Love Is In The Air, Dristanel from The Physician’s Log came up with a fantastic Blog Azeroth event! All of us participating make a post like this one and we each get our very own secret admirer.

And I get to blogstalk someone else…as if I didn’t do it enough already!

I’m very excited about this! I’ve never had a secret admirer before! No, that guy who sat in front of me in the fourth grade and stole my pencils when I wasn’t looking doesn’t count.

If you want to see other bloggers’ secret admirers, head over to The Physician’s Lodge to read the kickstart post!

I don’t do link love very often. I’m always afraid I’ll forget someone deserving of mention. Still, I’ll make a exception this once. After all, this week is a great opportunity to say a few words about the paladin blogs in my paladin blogroll, as well as introduce some newer blogs that I look forward to adding to my blogroll over the next few weeks.

We might not be as tight as the tree bloggers (I guess there’s just something about a forest sticking together), but I can assure that there is just as much awesomeness (if not more!) in our corner of the community.

I’m going to be as inclusive as possible, but the internet is a big, big place. If anyone reading this knows of a pally blog that I don’t, feel free to share it in the comments. Of course, there’s no point in linking to dead blogs, I’m sticking with blogs that have been updated in the past month.

Say hi to our newest Pally neighbors!

I get so excited when I see new pally bloggers introducing themselves. It’s great to hear new voices, read new takes and have new people to argue. Here are some promising voices I look forward to hearing more from:

Crusader Shock – Check his webpage, it looks gorgeous! Josh’s blog is still in the very early stages, but, with his nice, easy to read writing style and his prot paladin and Guild Master experience, he’s off to a great start.

Hand of Argus – Orthien is another prot paladin and GM who just recently started sharing his adventures with the blogosphere. His blog is still very new, but it seems like there’s a lot going on with his guild and that he’ll have quite a few stories to share with us over the next few months!

The Physician Log – Many of you may recognize Dristanel by her fantastic comments on my blog. Also, see my new spoon RSS feed icon? Yep! That was her! Isn’t it cool? I was thrilled to learn that she was starting her own blog on Holy Paladins and even more thrilled when I saw the quality of her blog and her writing. She also plans on bringing some role playing to the table, which I’m looking forward to reading. She’s definitely one to watch! Oh, and fellow bloggers, sign up for her secret admirer event! Should be tons of fun!

A Healadin’s Tear – We’ve got not one, but TWO! new holy paladin blogs! Tarinae is a GM and seasoned holy paladin. And do you know what especially exciting about her? (I’m assuming it’s a she…if I’m mistaken, forgive me!) According to her about page, she’s a PvP healer! I really hope she has a lot to say about PvP, because I sure have a lot to learn!

The V-Team – We’ve got not one, not two, but THREE holy paladins! Vailladin seems a bit shy, but maybe we can get him to open up. He writes from a more casual perspective that is very easy to relate too. His “New to Level 80” series was fabulous idea and he does an excellent job covering the topic. Another blogger to watch!

EDIT:After I hit the public button, several bloggers I wasn’t familiar with stopped by to introduce themselves. I’m thrilled to add them to their respective categories and say a few words about each! In the new blogger category is Labrat. Her blog name, Paladin Pants, is my sort of thing! She’s not exactly new, you may know him from Atomic Nerds, but her pally blog is still in the gathering momentum stages. Her articulate, opinionated posts on topics varying from guild tales to prot paladin intricacies to reflections on in-game social interactions caught my eye immediately. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to excuse myself so I can finish read her excellent musings.

The Essence of Paladining

It is a common misconception that, in order to be a good paladin, you must roll your face on your keyboard. Or mindlessly spam two spells. Or hit a 9696 macro.

Pff, believe me, it’s so much more than that! There’s a whole essence, a spirit, a lifestyle that comes with being a paladin. If you can’t feel like a paladin, deep down in your soul, then you’re a pathetic excuse for a paladin. To really get in touch with your true paladin self, I highly recommend you take to heart the wisdom of Jong and Megan at Forbearance and of Antigen at Haz Mace, Will Raid.

If you’re a veteran at paladining and have broadened your horizons to the world beyond the limitations of the Light, and perhaps even to the world-that-is-not-WoW, then I’m sure you know Galoheart, the Ardent Defender. I’m also sure that, like me, you hope that his vacation from WoW will be a short one and that you’ll be hearing from him again soon.

The Endless Wells of Information

A long time ago, back in December 2005, there was an introductory blog post that ended with “Here’s hoping that this is a successful experiment.” That blog post written by no other than Rohan from Blessing of Kings. For over four (FOUR!) years, an eternity in internet time, Rohan has been providing solid paladin and WoW content. Many paladin blogs come and go over the years yet Blessing of Kings remains a pillar for our corner of the internet. If there was a lifetime achievement award for WoW bloggers, I would nominate him in heartbeat. I’m curious as to whether he considers his “experiement” to be sucessful…

Equally fitting into the endless and diverse information category is the strange and colourful Paladin Schmaladin. The addition of Hofflerand and Honorshammer to Team Ferraro has even further increased the scope of the blog’s already large niche. While Ferraro tends to be somewhat marginal to the paladin and blogging community, Paladin Schmaladin remains an excellent source of information for paladins of all types, big and small.

The other night I acted without thinking and impulsively volunteered to lead a raid. After my guildies pointed out what I had done, I took a deep breath, grabbed my notebook and immediately went to Divine Plea and The Children of Wrath. The well designed cribsheets by Adgamorix and Renaissance Man, respectively, were lifesavers! Besides their helpful raid leading notes, both protadin flavored blogs offer great insight into the game and make for great reads.

Most paladins, when they think of tanking, they think Honorshammer. And with reason! Many of us (yes, myself included) learned to pally tank by avidly studying Honor’s Code. Honors has such a gift for explaining things and for spreading his passion for tanking.

And if Honor’s Code is paladin 101 tanking blog, then Righteous Defense is a paladin 201 tanking blog. Like Honors, Rhidach is also an expert when it comes to translating tanking theory into plain English for the rest of us. Whenever I need to brush up on the latest news and trends on pally tanking, Righteous Defense is my first, and often my last, stop. And if providing solid tanking content wasn’t enough, Rhidach also has this knack of slowly letting his personality shine through his writing, a little bit at a time, making his writing style absolutely addictive.

Aaand, if Honor’s Code is paladin tanking 101 and Righteous Defense is paladin tanking 201, then Avenging Wrathy is paladin tanking 301. Paladin tanks wanting deep, complex theory discussions get their fix at Avenging Wrathy. Still, while Wrathy does cater to a more select audience, his warm and vivid writing style is anything but dry! Now, if only he wasn’t so busy getting crazy achievements and updated a bit more often…

When I want to read about tanking in a different flavor, I have the perfect blog on hand. You may think Killing’em Slowly is a Warlock blog and you would be right. But every now and again, Fuubaar takes center stage and talks about pally tanking with an energy I’m envious of. She doesn’t get nearly as much blogging limelight as she deserves, so I’m going to start a protest, right here, right now.

EDIT:Svenn from The Misadventures of Svenn is another blogger who stopped by to say hi after I published this post. He reflects on the game and the people who play it, shares the results of his experiments and gives his guildies some love, all while taking a creative and unconventional approach to his writing.

The Retadins

I keep hearing QQ about how ret paladins are taking up space everywhere. I disagree. There’s at least one place where they do not take up nearly enough space: the blogosphere. Retpaladin.com has something akin to a blog on it’s main page, but it’s not the same as a blog regularly updated by the same person. With the excellent Suicidal Zebra taking a prolonged break from blogging, it’s a good thing we still have Morrighan and Firespirit to keep us updated on the Retworld! Both seem to be unfortunately busy with their offline life so I am impatiently waiting for them to update Caer Morrighan and Light’s Fury, respectively. Morrighan’s guides and cheat sheets are a huge help to me whenever I get the urge to smack mobs around with a two hander and Firespirit’s musings and adventure tales get me thinking, but you know me, I always want more!

The Healadins

I have a confession to make! I only realized recently that The Holy Paladin and Holypaladin.net were two completely different sites! You have to admit, they have a lot in common, even beyond their names. Both have somewhat mysterious authors (although Sweetiebird from The Holy Paladin is a regular at Plus Heal) and both are focused on holy paladin information. Those are the two first places I go when “reviewing the literature” for my more…informative…posts.

If you want numbers, if you want some pointers from a healer who’s seen it all and if you want a blog that has character, Moar HPS! is the blog for you. Most of us paladin healers tend to walk on the safe side, afraid to rock the boat. But not Codi! Whether it’s rewriting best in slot lists, experimenting without addons or wishing the rest of us would be a bit less politically correct, she proves over and over again that she has guts and knows how to use them.

Another blogger with guts is I am a Paladin, who, I’m happy to say, is updating quite regularly these days. For years now, she’s been offering advice to, provoking thought in and entertaining paladins and non paladins everywhere in her unique, upbeat and completely fearless writing style.

A Touch of Arcane might sounds like a mage blog, but don’t let sounds fool you. Dreaming is very much a holy paladin blogger. Who dabbles in discipline priest affairs on occasion, yet still very much a paladin. For any new paladin getting the hang of healing, I highly recommend his “Healing Through” series for descriptions and tips to healing Halls of Reflection and the first few bosses in ICC.

Three holy paladin blogs I’ve recently discovered (read: who need to advertise themselves more!) are Holy Shock, Looking for More and Non-Squishy Heals. Ruhtra, Jeffo and Saunder, respectively, have interesting, very readable writing styles and speak of topics that are easy to relate to. By the way, those of you on the Bloodlust Battlegroup looking for some awesome people (like me!!) to PvP with, Saudner is getting a group together for Saturday March 6! He doesn’t allow anonymous or open commenting, but I’m he won’t mind receiving emails from interested parties!

And last but most certainly not least, Pheadra is one of my personal favorite bloggers. On DI The Tank, she writes about her experiences raiding, playing a holy paladin and, recently, making the difficult but rewarding jump to a more intensive raiding environment. Her posts are a delightful mixture of her personal, heartfelt adventures and of her thoughts and interpretations of her class.

EDIT:In my determination to get this post out on time, I forgot to mention the unbeatable Snottydin. Creation of the brilliant Tamarind, Snottydin is, like, totally a grl irl and omg like can totally solo heal WoW! Want a challenge? Keep a straight face while reading Snotty’s posts. I bet you can’t do it! (By, the way, I believe Tamarind accepts guest posts for Snottydin’s Awesome Blog. Please, an email is all it takes to keep Snotty alive and well!

Through the comments I received on this post, I got the opportunity to meet two new holy paladin bloggers! One of them, Hana, stopped by to introduce half of his (I think!) blog, Flash of Moonfire (no worries, I’m sure the druid half is excellent too!). He writes a lot of fight descriptions, but fortunately, he is good at it. And I mean good! He’s a natural storyteller and skillfully avoids the usual boss fight clichés. I also noticed a few arena mentions, which I hope to see more of!

Another person to introduce themselves is Silk from WoW – Silk’s Blog. I’m shocked that I had never heard of him (I think!) before! He doesn’t post very often, but what he doesn’t have in quantity, he makes up for in quality. His thoughtful, well organized posts cover the ins and outs of high end raiding, reflections on the game and good ol’ holy paladin guidance. Despite the apparent seriousness of his writing, I did chuckle at a few occasions while reading, leading me to believe that there’s a hilarious, tongue in cheek jokester hidden somewhere.

See! Paladin Bloggers Are Awesome!

My fingers hurt. I wish I had room to say more about each and every blogger in this post. There’s such great work and discussion on the paladin class across the blogosphere. I did my best to include everyone, but as I mentioned in the introduction, the internet is a big place! If you know of a paladin blogger who has updated their blog in the past month, please let me know!

Also a few paladins I didn’t include but who definitely deserve some recognition are the brilliant posters at Maintankadin and Plus Heal. There is a reason why I rarely (if ever) post on those sites: questions and discussions are responded to in ways more articulate, helpful and efficient than I could ever muster. If any of you regulars from those forums are lurking around here, I want to say thank you.

EDIT:Sure enough, there were even more wonderful paladin bloggers that I wasn’t aware of!

Pugging Pally is a fantastic paladin blog I just discovered and I don’t understand why I didn’t find it sooner. I added her at the end since she doesn’t exactly fit into any of the above categories. The author (who does not provide a name) tells her adventures as she levels a holy paladin through the looking for dungeon system. The quality of the writing is top-notch and I burst out laughing several times at the hilarity of her descriptions. A must read for anyone who’s ever leveled, or tried to level, a libram wielding character.

Singles Awareness Day is a week from now and the Love Is In The Air event is starting up in the game. Are you guys finishing up the stupid candies achievement for your Purple Drake? Thank goodness I got that last candy on the last day! While the event is very cute, I got a lifetime’s worth of it last year. I don’t expect to be getting my hands dirty again any time soon.

Wait, wait, you say there’s some new items this year? Among others, a Toxic Wasteling pet and a Heartbreaker? Ok, I suppose I’ll head over to Scarlet Monastery Shadowfang Keep a few times.

But really, I’d rather do a different kind of Love Is In The Air achievements this year. I’d like to take the event to my blog. Love is in the Blog!

With me being Ms Hardened Singleton Extraordinaire, you’d think I’d hate Valentine’s/Singles Awareness/Male Judgment Day, however you choose to call it. You’d think. But I don’t. It’s actually one of my favorite holidays. It’s the one time of year where I have an excuse to be a sappy shmoock and drive my friends, my colleagues, my acquaintances, random strangers on the street crazy with displays of affection.

Since this is a WoW blog, I want to use the next week to spread a little WoW love. Or raise WoW singleton awareness. Or get in touch with my sentimental side. I haven’t planned it all out yet, but I’m excited to announce that love will be in the blog.

EDIT: Just thought I’d mention, I’m totally not claiming copyrights on the idea (and as far as I know, it could have been done by people in the past). If anyone is at a loss for blog ideas this week and wants to join in on the theme, I’m all for it and will even link back to you.